Application of compound semiconductors to electronic and optoelectronic devices offers numerous advantages over elementary semiconductors, such as the feasibility of high quality heterostructures prepared by modern crystal growth techniques. And optical resonant cavity formed by multilayer dielectric stacks is among the important applications of heterostructures in optoelectronic devices.This thesis deals with a theoretical and experimental investigation of resonant cavity (RC) photodetectors and avalanche optoelectronic switches. It has been demonstrated previously that the resonant cavity scheme can increase the quantum efficiency of photodetectors without degrading the response speed. The quantum efficiency has been further enhanced over the previously reported values by using periodic absorbers and an optimized top mirror. In order to gain a better understanding and thus achieve better performance in resonant cavity devices, a numerical simulation based on a transfer matrix approach has been carried out. A good agreement between simulations and experiments was obtained.A novel optoelectronic switch was developed by taking advantage of the high optical gain provided by the transistor action and avalanche multiplication. In addition to high sensitivity, the device can be optically switched at a selected wavelength owing to the integrated resonant cavity. Similar characteristics of avalanche switching have also been demonstrated in the Si/SiGe system.